Malorie(59)

Henry shifts the plate over the glass again.

“Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t we go somewhere where this type of thing is not only tolerated, but encouraged.” He steps closer to Tom. “Do you know where we are…right now?”

Tom shakes his head no. He has no idea. He’s spent the last ten years in a former summer camp.

Henry makes a mitten of his hand, shaped like Michigan, and points to the center of his middle finger.

“Indian River,” he says.

He smiles.

Tom’s heart is beating too hard. This is too much.

“You’ve heard of it?” Henry asks.

“Yes!” Breathless.

Henry nods.

“I could guide you there. You can show them your glasses. People who will appreciate what you’ve done.”

“Have…have you been?” Tom asks.

Henry laughs.

“I’ve lived there.” Then, “What do you say, Tom? Change your life? Start living your own…no longer your mother’s?”

Tom brings a hand to his face, to where Malorie slapped him.

“Yes,” Tom says. “I wanna do that. I wanna start living my own. Right now.”





TWENTY-FOUR


Olympia doesn’t have to look out a window to know the train is nearly surrounded by creatures.

She hears them.

There’s a difference, she’s learned, between the steps of a deer and those of the things that have nearly driven her mother insane the old way. It isn’t so much the weight as it is the width, the breadth of a step and the intent (or lack thereof) within.

Yes, she knows they’re surrounded. It sounds like hundreds outside the train. Enough to be heard above the wheels.

Malorie is not back. This doesn’t mean she hasn’t found Tom yet, but it probably does. Olympia doesn’t want to believe her brother could’ve left the train, but she also understands that Malorie has never slapped him before, either. What might Tom be thinking right now?

It’s impossible for her not to compare real life with the words and pages of writers from the old world. And adding to this is the number of “coming of age” stories she’s found. Dozens of novels in which the boy or girl found themselves by the end, their purpose, their future. Is Tom on a similar precipice?

And if so, could he step into a wholly new future without them?

Voices outside the room. People sound worried. Maybe they suspect something’s outside, too. She needs to tell everyone what she’s heard. If there’s one horror Malorie has underscored more than any other, it’s that it only takes a single person to look, one to see, one madman to set the entire matchbook aflame.

She slides open the cabin door, half expecting to see the man Henry who, if she’s honest with herself, reminded her of Malorie’s description of Gary. Malorie’s boogeyman. In the hall. With an axe.

GOTCHA!

But, no. In his stead are a half dozen scared people, looking to her, a sixteen-year-old girl, for guidance, information, hope.

“What’s going on?” a woman asks.

“Like Dean warned us,” she says, “we’re passing through an area with a lot of them.”

Them.

Nobody needs further clarification in the new world.

But the people only stare at her.

“Please,” Olympia says. Then she adopts her mother’s voice. “Stick in your cabins, close your eyes, till we get past them.”

Leading. Guiding. Olympia has been doing variations of this for years.

She heads up the hall. The doors to each room are open. People sense something is up.

“Close your eyes,” she tells each she passes. “Sit tight.”

When she reaches the end of the car, she does the same. She slides the door open and steps through.

Here, more people. More conversation. They all look so confused. So vulnerable. Don’t they know there’s only one rule to live by? Don’t they understand that any time they feel like something is up they should close their eyes?

“Hey!” she calls, gaining confidence in giving directions. “Everybody close your eyes. Lots of them outside.”

A man stops her.

“What do you know?” he asks, suspicion in his eyes. Olympia thinks of something Malorie taught her long ago.

Whoever you meet, whoever we encounter, you have to remember that they’ve experienced loss. Whether it was their parents, their kids, their friends…they’ve lost someone to the new world. And you need to keep that in mind when they talk to you, when they sound like they don’t trust you, when they eye you like you’re the danger.

“There are many outside the train,” she says.

The man closes his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says.

Olympia is moving again. Thinking of Tom. Thinking of Malorie. Where are they?

“Hey,” Olympia says to a woman who stands facing the black metal slate that was once a window. “You should close your eyes.”

By way of the woman’s profile, Olympia sees a sadness she has not encountered before. When the creatures arrived, Malorie, Olympia knows, got angry. She got scared. But she never let the sadness of the new world rule her.

Mom, Olympia thinks. I’m coming.

Malorie thought her parents dead for seventeen years, for longer than Olympia has been alive! Yet she found the energy to raise her kids. She’s found the resolve to repeat her rules, over and over again, to pound safety into their heads, always. What would Olympia do if she’d read her birth mother’s name on that list of survivors? Would she have reacted as swiftly as Malorie did? Or would she have withdrawn?